Secondly, there are few things I'd like to address today...construction workers, food, and babies.
Construction Workers: When passing a construction site, you will notice several workers all clad in grungey clothes and no safety gear. But that is not really a big deal because when you see this group of workers, they are all gathered around just standing there watching one guy do all the work. I guess thats communism for you.
Food: Many have asked and I've been a little hesitant on responding because I don't want to repeat what happened at Space Camp. I will start by sharing a typical dining experience. Most restaurants are non-smoking now because of the Olympics, so you don't have to worry about that much. The menu usually has chinese and english (sometimes the english is a little off, but you can get the idea) and there are always lots of pictures. The pictures definitely help, but no matter how good the picture looks of say, pig knuckle in brown sauce, I will not order it. You call loudly for the waiter, "Fu Yuan," and accompany it with an obnoxious waiving hand in the air, otherwise they'll ignore you (and this goes for pretty much every restaurant.) When you're done eating you can usually sit as long as you want and they don't care, but as soon as you ask for the bill, they stand there until you pay and then expect you to get up and leave immediately.
When I'm not in the mood for the whole restaurant scene, there are these little hole-in-the-wall places that serve all sorts of chinese-y things. The front of these places have a little window that you order at and they make your food right there, put it into a little clear plastic bag, and give it to you. It's always hot and fresh, very yummy. In these types of places the most popular
thing is fried egg sandwiches. There is a guy right outside my apartment building that works every day from probably 7am to 10pm maybe longer. The shop is no bigger that a small walk-in closet. He has a cute little apron with cartoon pictures on it. He stands at his window with a large cooking stone like the ones you make crepes on. When you order he will whip you up one of these awesome crepe sandwich things: First he pours a crepe-like mix down and spreads it out, then he cracks an egg on top of that, breaks the yolk and spreads that around on top of the crepe. Next he flips it over so the egg is on the outside of the sandwich. He then smears some sauces on it, spicy and sweet, throws some cilantro on that (cilantro is huge here, everything has cilantro in it!) and then places a crispy wonton wrapper on top of that. He strategically breaks the wonton sheet so that he can fold the crepe into a nice little square. He plops it into a plastic bag (like a mini grocery store bag) you pay, and he hands you a steaming hot meal in a bag. I'm really into this whole thing, so next time I'll see if I can take pictures of him doing it :-)
This is just one of the many little windows you can stop at. There are also bread places that make fresh flatbread very similar to naan. One of the best things I've had here so far, plus I get to watch the woman make it.
I should stop now, because I went on for a long time about food, but real quick I'll tell you about the babies.
Chinese babies are like all babies either really cute or really ugly. Unfortunately for the cute chinese babies, there is this heinous haircut that all parents are giving their children.
This is just my subjective opinion, but it looks something like a little poop turd on their forehead...no joke. This is the best example I could find, so image Chinese baby not western baby and black hair not brown. In addition to these strange little haircuts, babies here don't wear pants or diapers. And if they do wear pants, the crotch it missing. That way when they gotta go, they can just go. They walk around with their little wee-wees and bottoms hanging out for all to see. Great for them. But I was in an old temple/museum the other day and a baby started peeing on the floor, no big deal, the parents carried it outside eventually, but left a nice little water trail on their way out. Luckily they don't seem to poop too much...
These are just some of the little cultural observations I've made over the past couple of weeks. Stay tuned...next I'll tell ya all about the taxi cabs here!
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